A Night Off

I'm sleeping in the spare bed in Kim's room tonight! Indira and I had both been slightly ill (her more so) and then seemingly recovered. Unfortunately she hadn't actually recovered at all and the next thing I know I'm woken up at 2am by Indira throwing up violently. I couldn't get back to sleep and of course I was worried about her! She went on to throw up again at 5am and then at 7am. When I got up at 7.30am, thinking she would had finished or at least would be paused again for another hour or two, I heard a knock as I was washing myself with the bucket of water and it was Indira asking if she could come in because she was going to throw up. I was covered in soap, butt naked, so I shouted to her to wait a minute and covered myself up with a towel. I got her a bucket to be sick in, but these few seconds were precious and by the time I opened the door I was too late. She was being sick in a cup of her own hands. I stood there completely helpless, unsure of what to do. Indria then washed her hands, got into bed and I rinsed myself off, put the bucket beside her, got her some water and woke up Kim to tell her what had happened before heading off to do 3 hours of aerial this morning! I hadn't slept at all and apparently neither had anyone else. Kim had woken up at 2.30 with a headache and was kept up after that by Indira retching and Kumari, the gardener's wife, and her family could also hear her throughout the night....poor Indira! None of us have any idea of what it is. We all ate and drank exactly the same thing. The only thing I can think of, maybe, is that the bug she had last week still hadn't fully left and something triggered it...I don't know! But, she went to the doctor today and was put on an I.V. and has been given a ton of medication to take. She's also not been allowed to eat for the past 24 hours so I hope she feels better enough tomorrow so she's allowed to eat. She has to call the doctor to tell him her symptoms and he'll tell her where she can go from there, but his English is not so hot so that'll be an interesting conversation!

Oh dear...

So today I started working on some choreography with Papin and Puja. But, before that, with those two and Manoj, I managed to organise some proper warm ups and conditioning on the equipment, then we worked on some of the things I'd already taught them, making progress! When Manoj left we did some choreography. But, they were exhausted, asking me if they could stop as if I was torturing them. I suppose I was giving them a pretty hardcore workout. So after pushing them as much as I could I had to give in! They worked hard! I managed to show Kim some possibilities as she popped in near the end of the class, so that gave me some ideas of where to go with the choreography from there.

When Papin and Puja left I helped Kim repair the old Andhra Pradesh shadow puppets with coconut oil. They're all made from leather and the hole punching detail on them is AMAZING, but unfortunately they've not been looked after at all. They're dry and they've been stored all crumpled and creased. We're greasing them up with coconut oil which helps restore the colour and allows us to be able to reshape them. The smell of the coconut oil is lovely, but it's almost impossible to use if it's cold as it doesn't come out of the bottle! We had to sit it in the sun to heat it up, which only made the smell stronger. Tasty! The men and women use it here in the their hair, slicking it back so it glistens in the sun.

Indira has been wanting a big Gujarati nose pin and where we'd briefly looked before they had been not overly exciting and fairly expensive (1000 rupees which I suppose is £15). So I asked Kumari in the best way I could (through much gesturing and random words) where she bought her nose pin as she has proper big golden jewellery. She always jangles with her bangles and ankle bracelets and is decorated with toe rings and nose pins. She managed to communicate this place 'gintinagar' was where she went and said she would show us on her afternoon off this Saturday. As Elsa is leaving next week and Kumari only has weekends free this was our only opportunity to go so we thought we could go as it's only a 10 minute walk and take Indira back after when she's feeling better. Kumari seemed pretty excited; she even changed her sari for the occasion! I was really excited to see where she went shopping, thinking we'd get some real bargains. So mum, Elsa, Kumari, her daughter Keiran and I all trekked off down the road to what I was not really expecting at all. It was an average street with some tatty shops on it. But, I took my camera and tried to get photos of things that were moving a little too quickly than I had time to adjust my settings (cursed film camera!); a camel, women carrying bales of sticks on their heads, huge cows in the middle of the road, kids leaving school weaving in and out of rickshaws. And I bought Indira some plain postcards with tacky Hindu stickers to decorate them with as she'd been really wanting some and we'd been having problems finding any. I also spent some hilarious time trying to communicate "white flour" (I was originally pointed towards cauliflower) because we've decided to make pancakes tomorrow! It is a Sunday after all...so I don't know what I did get in the end, but hopefully it'll be fine.

Then Elsa, Kim and I made spaghetti, had a couple of rum punch drinks and chatted. Gujarat is a dry state, not that I would ever think of India as somewhere were drinking is a cultural thing anyway, but as a tourist here you can get an alcohol visa which gives you a monthly supply. Neither Indira nor I actually got one, but there was some rum and gin here from the last visitors so we decided to splash out and have a drink!! It does feel pretty odd when you haven't had one in a few weeks, but quite a nice treat. Elsa and I were going to go to a documentary film night, but I was so tired from my lack of sleep that we just ended up staying and talking. I really like her, she's such a great character! She's going to take us to a Flea Market (she has AMAZING style) called Ravi Vari which means Sunday tomorrow after pancakes - I'm very excited! There's another documentary film night on tomorrow so I may go depending on how I feel...it's nice to be somewhere other than home and Darpana which seems to be my only hang outs!

Hopefully Indira will feel better and be able to eat pancakes and join us on our shopping expedition on Sunday...